


Gallivanters of The Multiverse

by EnderTinman



Category: Ben 10 Series, Stargate - All Media Types
Genre: Dimension Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-11
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-23 14:28:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9661322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnderTinman/pseuds/EnderTinman
Summary: Emotions are a powerful, unpredictable thing. So is The Fog.





	1. Chapter 1

"That went... well." Michael strolls into the common room of The Cave, a large green-grey coral room, goo clinging to him and odor visibly radiating off of him.  
"Well, it's about ‘slime’ you got back!" Jay laughs from the nearby sofa, Michael can't remember what universe they lifted it from.  
"Damn you, that's worth something in the jar!" He shouts back, Jay leans up and throws a coin into a nearby jar covered in assorted multidimensional money.  
"So what happened?"  
“The universe is a dud, covered in… well you know." Michael shakes his arms, the goo refusing to detach from his clothing. "I'm gonna need a new jacket, again."  
"Go with red, grey was never your colour." Jay advises as Michael walks onto the platform.  
"Maybe, depends if I can get it in a good material so that it'll survive the trashing it'll get." He takes the jacket off and throws it on a nearby railing, where it's doomed to be stuck for quite a while, and walks over to the makeshift kitchen to raid the fridge, finding half empty takeout boxes and flat cola bottles. "We need to keep on top of our leftovers."  
Jay laughs, knowing that Michael is responsible for most of the mess in the fridge, he abruptly stops when his legs are pushed off the arm of the sofa so that Michael can sit beside him.

Michelle wanders in from the upper levels some time later, angrily tapping at an alien tablet in her hands, mumbling curses under her breath until she notices the two sat nearby. "Oh hey, you're back."  
"Quite observant of you." Michael greets his alternate self.  
"Shut up, you ass. How was it?"  
"A dud: apocalypse timeline, slime rises out of the subway and onto the street, I landed in a bunch of it." He points to his jacket.  
"Check the firehouse?"  
"A smoldering wreck, I suspect the containment blew at some point, all I could find were some possessed hubcaps."  
"Sounds like great souvenirs."  
"No." Jay tells them.  
"Anyway." Michelle brushes off Jay's definitive statement. "I got a computer terminal operational and..."  
"What?" Michael frowns as she descends the stairs. "I thought we agreed to not go snooping around this place?"  
"Well yeah, but I figured that if I could get a computer working, I could figure out who owns this facility."  
"And...?" Jay speaks up before Michael can argue.  
"No one does, there are no files on ownership, no government or military organisation built this place, heck, it probably wasn't even built judging by the lack of records."  
"But files can be erased, and we can't go around some place, making it our own, thinking no one's gonna want to come back and reclaim it." Michael retorts. "And I refuse to believe that this place just popped into existence when it decided too!"  
"Universes pop into existence all the time." Jay says, getting up from the sofa to stand between them. He turns to Michelle. "And we agreed to make a group decision before venturing further."  
"Yes I understand that, but I got worried, our only defense is a busted blast door at the entrance, I cannot find any defence turrets, laser grids or even a padlock, if someone we don't want to be here gets here, we have no way to stop them." Michelle says, keeping her voice level.  
"There could also be threats within the facility, it must've been abandoned for a reason!" Michael shouts.  
"And wondering about it is better than actually finding the reason we're the only ones here?"  
"No, it's not, but if one of us goes snooping around and gets lost, or finds whatever hypothetical horror is in there, no-one will know!"  
"Well I'll have you know that there's no-one else here, I found biometric scanners, and it only registers three life signs!" Michelle shouts. "I know that because I went behind your backs and actually did something instead of loaf around on the sofa or wade around in disaster realities!" She exhales, and slowly leaves through The Cave's main entrance.

"Should we follow her?" Jay asks, shooting an angry sideways glance at Michael.  
"No... I know me, Jay, she needs a minute to cool down and be level headed, we all know she was right, she knows that I'm also right... hell, that would've been me the first day we got here if we hadn't set up ground rules." Michael admits, dragging his eyes away from the entrance to look at the tablet his alternate self had dropped. "Let's see what she found."

Michelle shuffles her way under the busted blast door and out to the fog coated exterior. She walks further and further away from the entrance, the fog embracing her until she disappears.


	2. The Path Taken To Avoid It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emotions are a powerful, unpredictable thing. So is The Fog.

The Fog twists and turns, sending Michelle on a winding path far away from The Cave, her anger warps it into sending her far from where she wants to be.

 

It spits her out on a rocky outcrop and she immediately kicks a few loose stones down the hill, she mumbles angrily, neglecting to take in her new surroundings. Another rock is sent tumbling down the hill, dust is sent dancing into the air, she punches a nearby tree.

She covers her mouth with her other hand, realising her stupid mistake as pain overtakes her senses. She cradles her hand, expecting a large bruise and some blood, instead finding it covered in soot.

"Wait, what?" She looks at the tree, to see a fist sized dent in the bark, but instead it was scorched as if there'd recently been a forest fire. "Someone didn't listen to Smokey..." she turns to scan the rest of the forest she's found herself in.

There's still smoke rising over the horizon, her vantage atop this hill helps scope out an abandoned campsite, but another source of smoke is closer than the rest. Possibly the origin of fire, she slides down the hill to investigate.

The origin turns out to be a crater, it's not the cause of the fire, and within rests a glowing green orb.

"Is this the part where my No-Watch variant uses my Talpaedan form to knock me into the crater?" Michelle asks the burnt forest around her, whistling wind is the only reply.

Conveniently, the piece of ground she's standing upon dislodges and sends her tumbling down towards the orb, but instead of it opening up, the base of the crater bursts open into a blue vortex.

"Damn you No-Watch!"

 

In stark contrast to the early morning of a smoldering forest, Michelle now floats in a dark void, where there is no concept of up, down, time, or horse radish.

"I should've stayed at The Cave..." She complains.

"There's no point in wondering what should have, might have or will be." A vice sagely echoes through the void. "It would be better to, how the kids say, 'live in the moment.'" An elderly man, dressed in clothing that can only be described as 'steampunk', appears beside her.

"Professor Paradox." Michelle greets him, extending a hand. "Big fan."

"I'm sure you are, Miss Stone, and I am a fan of your future endeavors." Another orb, or the same one?, floats into his other hand, the prosthetic one that held his Chrono-Navigator, and Michelle's hands fly up in argument.

“No, no, nope, I can't take it! I don't deserve that kind of power, I can't handle that kind of power.” Her hands pull at her hair, then her jacket. “What if I become like Albedo, or Mad Ben? What if I get stuck as Toepick, or Ghostfreak, or Walkatrout? Wait no, that last one was offensive.”

Paradox clears his throat.

“Right, no worrying about ‘what if’... but still, I can't just take an Omnitrix from some Disaster Timeline, slap it on and parade about like I'm some hero.”

“A great man once said that one finds their destiny on the path they take to avoid it… I must get Mr La Fontaine to sign my copy of Fables.”

Michelle looks over her shoulder, more dark void stretching on for forever, she'd abandoned her friends in a fit of blind rage, ‘avoiding her destiny’ or whatever.

“And I'm afraid…” He says, as the orb splits open. “You don't really have much of a choice.”

The Omnitrix leaps out of the orb and secures itself firmly on Michelle’s wrist. She takes a step back in shock, which is impossible in a place with no ground, and falls away from Paradox, again… impossible. Fog rapidly clouds her vision.

 

The Cave

Michael ignores the two blinking dots on the tablet, he hopes, he knows, Michelle will be back when she's ready, they were both out of line.

The first set of rooms they find, in a corridor behind a sealed blast door, were dubbed ‘Labs', as they contained a bunch of equipment whose uses couldn't be discerned, and a variety of workbenches and tools.

Jay was in the room on the opposite side of the corridor, seeing if he could remotely access any of the systems with his own tablet.

This room however, contained a large bank of monitors, with no apparent computer, Michael figured it was an access terminal for a larger system held deeper within The Cave.

Power wasn't a problem, The Cave was running off of some geothermal generator that he'd love to get a look at if he found a protective suit, but understanding whatever language the creator's had used was.

He activates the terminal screen, which began glowing a dull green, with blurry icons fading in and out of focus on-screen, he was never a good linguistic.

The tablet in his hand beeps, displaying the message ‘the most universal language is numbers - MS.’

Of course she looked at the OS, all code can be compressed into binary and translated into any language, and vice versa.

“Whaddya got?” asks Jay as he enters the room, pausing. when he sees the active terminal.

“A language, Michelle was right, this entire system is bare bones, just OS and language settings.”

“Can we translate?”

Michael taps his tablet. “No, but we can make new entries in English, but we can't read about what any of this equipment does.”

“So what, we need a linguist?”

Michael frowns for a moment. “I know where there's a pretty good one.” He turns around to leave the room, but Jay blocks his path.

“But we can't leave because Michelle will think we've gone off without her.”

“So you stay behind, tell her what happened, and I'll apologize properly when I get back. In the meantime, you've got all this stuff to go over.”

“And where are you going?”

“Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado Springs.” He marches out of the lab, mentally preparing on how to deal with what he knows lies ahead.


End file.
